With Respect To Gaming, Android Still Lags Behind iOS (bgr.com)

An anonymous reader writes: No matter what you think about the Android/iOS divide from either a hardware or software perspective, there's simply no getting around the fact that many developers still take an iOS-first approach with respect to app development. With games, where development costs are already sky-high, the dynamic is even more pronounced. For instance, one of the most addictive, successful, and highly rated apps currently available on the App Store is a great snowboarding game called Alto's Adventure. It was originally released this past February for the iPhone and iPad (and now the Apple TV). Still today, nine months after its initial release, an Android version of the app remains non-existent. Now if you're an Android user who happens to enjoy mobile gaming, it's easy to see how this dynamic playing out over and over again can quickly become an endless source of frustration.

Comments

Why?

[mwvdlee]

Is iOS simply more profitable?
Is Android harder to program or support?
Is code easily portable?
Do iOS devices have more hardware resources?

Re:Why?

[Pieroxy]

I think your first two points are the reason. People using iOS are far more likely to actually PAY for a game (or any other app for that matter). The fact that the iOS platform is far more homogeneous (At any point in time you have to cover 2 versions of the OS, three tablets and three phones to address 90+% of iOS users) make also development costs lower. Lower costs, higher profits, yes, the iOS platform is most likely an order of magnitude more profitable than Android.

Re:Why?

[jareth-0205]

As an Android developer of the last 6 years, my opinion:

Is iOS simply more profitable?

In a word - yes. Android users tend not to buy apps directly, iOS there seems to be an acceptance that most good apps will be paid, and Android most apps are free. If you can get money out of the user in a different way (eg subscriptions made elsewhere) it seems more even, but as for mobile purchases, the culture around Apple is more willing.

Is Android harder to program or support? Is code easily portable?

There are different challenges certainly but all the teams I've worked in have moved at about the same speed. The myth that Android is hard to program doesn't bear-out in reality. I think libraries like Unity mean there are even less platform differences in games than with plan apps.

Do iOS devices have more hardware resources?

No, top-end Androids usually have more power than current iPhones, but iPhones are more homogenous, which makes tuning easier. Also they don't stick around as long (partly because Apple upgrade them into uselessness) so I think the average iPhone is newer than the average Android.

Re:Why?

[jareth-0205]

There are 100s of Android devices, all with wildly different hardware specs. Just covering the most popular gives you about 25 devices to test, and every one of them will have family-specific bugs to iron out.

Yeah yeah, change the record. If you think this is a big issue then you have never programmed for Windows / web / any operating system that isn't the very brief device-limited situation that iOS is lucky enough to be in. Think how many devices there is possible on the desktop? But we don't whine about that because it's normal there. I suspect you're not a developer, because there is no way that "every" device has specific bugs to work around. That is entirely the point of an operating system... Device bugs happen occasionally but I can count on one hand in my career the times I've had to do it.

Re: Why?

[jofas]

Your numbers are very creative: - iOS only captured 47.5 of 341.5 million in Q2 2015 (http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp) - Froyo and Gingerbread account for only 4% of total Android version together (http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html) - Average devel cost of iOS *or* Android app is closer to $100K, and that's for companies with the cash to throw at it. (http://www.comentum.com/mobile-app-development-cost.html)

Re: Why?

[AmiMoJo]

a good chunk of those are still on gingerbread or Froyo even

Which is of course horse shit. A mere 4% of users are on pre-4.0 versions of the OS, and their devices are likely not powerful enough to run any game that actually cares about API features from later versions.

Android had over 80% of the market in 2014, and rising. Even if any given Android user spends only 1/5th as much on apps, it's still as lucrative as iOS.

Finding a few games that are not out on Android means nothing. There are popular Android games not out on iOS. There are many games that can never come out on iOS due to content restrictions. The reasons why games don't always come out on every platform are complex, and looking at the AAA titles that are available on Android it's obvious that there is no problem developing or making money on the platform.